CLOSING THIS MONTH

The Art of Alchemy

Through February 12, 2017 | The Getty Center

Multilayered paper dials called volvelles were meticulously cut from printed pages and then sewn into the books they accompanied to chart the progress of celestial bodies and reveal their alchemical influences. This volvelle booknow on display as part of The Art of Alchemywas produced by Leonhard Thurneisser zum Thurn, an alchemist and physician to the Elector of Brandenburg, as less of a useful scientific tool than as a vanity piece to publicly vaunt his grasp of the cosmos. Similar (and more accurate) books were readily available for astronomers and navigators by the time this elaborate version had been published.

Gallery tours are offered on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 2:00 p.m. through February 9.

EVENTS

View of Palmyra from Qalaat Shirkuh before the destruction of its major monuments by ISIS (detail). Photo Credit: Judith McKenzie/Manar al-Athar, 2010

Palmyra and Aleppo: Syria's Cultural Heritage in Conflict

Lecture | February 8, 2017 | 3:00 p.m. | The Getty Center

Since 2011 and the beginning of the political unrest in Syria, the so-called Islamic State (ISIS) has seized large areas of Syria and Iraq, resulting in catastrophic loss of life, an unprecedented refugee crisis, and the looting and destruction of heritage sites. The historic cities of Palmyra and Aleppo have become emblematic of the widespread and deliberate destruction unleashed throughout the country. With Syria's history under attack, the GRI hosts a panel of specialists to discuss the unfolding consequences of war on historic sites and monuments throughout the region.

This panel complements the forthcoming online exhibition The Legacy of Ancient Palmyra, which launches on February 8.

Lady Strangford's Travel Account of Crossing the Syrian Desert

Facebook Live | February 14, 2017 | 9:009:15 a.m. | Online Only

Join Peter Louis Bonfitto, co-curator of the forthcoming online exhibition The Legacy of Ancient Palmyra, and art historian Jane Friedman as they uncover the 19th-century travels of the intrepid Emily Anne Smythe, Viscountess Strangford, throughout the Middle East. In an illustrated description of her two years spent in the region, Lady Strangford offered an expanding literate public a vicarious journey to exotic ancient sites and also sought to assure individualsparticularly womenthat travel could be performed with "ease and security" in the region.

Secrets of a European Neuroarthistory

Join University of East Anglia, Norwich, Professor Emeritus of World Art John Onians as he discusses neuroarthistory, an approach to art history that makes use of the latest neuroscientific knowledge to offer an alternative explanation to exceptional artistic quality produced over the last 30,000 years. A shift from the traditional line of thinking in which art is the product of intense conscious thought, neuroarthistory seeks to understand an artist's intent by reconstructing what they may have been looking at and why.

Memorias del Subdesarrollo (Memories of Underdevelopment)

Using Fidel Castro's new regime as a backdrop, director Tomás Gutiérrez Alea's Memorias del Subdesarrollo (1968, 35 mm film, 97 mins.,) is a reflection on postrevolutionary Cuba as seen through the eyes of a well-to-do intellectual who stays in the country despite his family's exile to the United States. Using an experimental format, the film combines a fictional story with found footage of historical events, including the Bay of Pigs Invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis. Critically acclaimed at the time of its release, Memorias was the first Cuban film to be shown in the United States after the revolution and is still widely considered one of the greatest films in Cuban history.

Cuban actress Daisy Granados and editor Nelson Rodríguez will join the GRI's Rani Singh in a conversation following the screening.

NEW ACQUISITION

Miranda July's Joanie 4 Jackie Archive

American artist and filmmaker Miranda July's expansive archive of feminist short movies and video art, Joanie 4 Jackie, is the GRI's latest acquisition. Generously donated by July, the archive contains videos, documentation, and print materials from her project Joanie 4 Jackie, a series of chain letterstyle videotapes compiling works from women filmmakers and video artists. July developed the project in the 1990s and 2000s as a way of distributing and instigating video art by female artists whom she felt were underrepresented in mainstream media.

ONLINE INTERACTIVE

Screen detail from the Explodity online interactive.

Explodity: Sound, Image, and Word in Russian Futurist Book Art

Complementing the new GRI publication Explodity: Sound, Image, and Word in Russian Futurist Book Art by Curator Nancy Perloff, this online interactive presents "transrational" sound poetry (known in Russian as zaum, a neologism meaning "beyond the mind") as the original poets and artists intended it to be experienced: a synthesis of word, image, and sound. Featuring ten poems analyzed in the book and drawn from a selection of Russian artists' books created between 1910 and 1915, this interactive website includes Russian transliterations, English translations, and the option to listen to the poems.

ANNOUNCEMENT

Detail of a receipt acknowledging payment for three paintings commissioned for the Principe di Massa, Guercino, 1663. The Getty Research Institute, 850655

Mellon Summer Institute in Italian Paleography Applications Due March 10

This three-week residential course offers participants an intensive introduction to reading and transcription of handwritten Italian vernacular texts from the late medieval though the early modern periods. Led by Maddalena Signorini, associate professor of Latin paleography at the Università degli Studi di Roma "Tor Vergata," the course focuses on building paleographical skills, and also offers an overview of materials and techniques as well as insight into Italian archive systems.

The Mellon Summer Institute is held at the GRI and runs from July 1028, 2017. The course is taught in Italian.

NEW FOR RESEARCHERS

A sketched underwater scene from the closing page of a letter attributed to Basil Temple Blackwood, 1908. The Getty Research Institute, 860525

Letters and Papers of British Artists, 17741964

Finding Aid

Spanning almost two centuries, this collection comprises 1,360 items of correspondence from 507 British painters, illustrators, printmakers, draftsmen, and sculptors. It includes not only signed letters but also illustrated letters, sketches, press clippings, manuscripts, and reproductions of artworks, and was assembled as individual items or by small lots by the GRI. The majority of the letters date from the late 19th century; however, the archive also includes 200 letters dating from 19001964, and 10 from 17741797.